President Barack Obama unveiled his immigration plan yesterday saying lifting the threat of expulsion from five million undocumented migrants would make the system “more fair and just.”
And, while he stressed migrants will not get “a free pass to American citizenship” without taking the proper steps, Obama said that “rounding up and deporting millions of people isn´t realistic.”
“My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too,” Obama declared, in a primetime national address from the White House.
“What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal — that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.”
The plan that Obama outlined will allow undocumented migrants who have been living illegally in the United States for five years and have US-born children to apply for three-year work permits.
Thus protected from the threat of deportation, they will be able to come out of the shadows, undergo criminal records checks and pay proper taxes to US authorities while applying for longer-term residency.
